Monday, September 6, 2010

Lauren and Nick: Romantic Blue and White Wedding

Lauren and Nick's wedding at The Woodlands Inn and Resort in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania was a great opportunity for me to flex more of my "StyleFile" muscles as Lauren came to me with an assembled in-house team of vendors who needed just a little direction to boost this event from lovely to fabulous. Lauren's personal style is feminine, but simple and clean and she wanted her wedding style to reflect just that. It was her amazing Vera Wang wedding dress that inspired much of the wedding design: the white on white stripes with bow detailing said everything Lauren wanted to say.

My pride and joy from this wedding design is the escort card display. During one phone consultation, Lauren mentioned that she wanted to include some sort of floating flower component in the design. Since just flowers in a bowl were not stylized enough for what we were trying to accomplish, I dreamed up (by the way, until this very moment of spell-check clarity, I totally thought that word was dreamt, but evidently not! Who knew?) this gigantic water table as the focal point of the cocktail space. The total size of this table was about 7 feet square, with the center "pool" at 4 feet square. The beautifully calligraphed escort cards with custom designed monogram on top were arranged on a pave of white carnations surrounding the entire pool. Hydrangeas, gardenias and candles floating in the water were highlighted with soft blue light for some extra glimmer. It was pretty fabulous. I loved watching all of the guests explore this table, gently touching the flowers and the water to see if everything was real. It was spectacular!

Inside the ballroom, we channeled a little bit of Old Hollywood and a lot of classic elegance to create two styles of table designs: long ovals with a landscape of low centerpieces and traditional rounds with high arrangements. Accents of pearls, bows and tons of candlelight tied the design together with the dress inspiration and a sweet, romantic glow.

I was faced with a huge challenge in this particular ballroom because these ceilings were LOW. I mean lower-than-your-traditional-studio-apartment-LOW. So... some of the lighting and draping techniques that I often rely on and that drew Lauren to my work initially were out of the question. As a result, I needed to create focal points in a different way. The first thing we did was bring in an all-white dance floor and finish it with Lauren and Nick's custom insignia that I created as part of the StyleFile. I used a vinyl transfer to apply their logo and it looked amazing on the white floor. I had done it many times on traditional parquet floors, but never on white. Yum! It looked hand painted!

Also, my amazing lighting team installed 150 iridescent glass globes and candleholders into the ceiling tracks and then lit them with color changing LEDs to give the low ceiling an amazing glow all night long.

This project was a true delight because even though Lauren had a team of vendors already on board before she met me, she was so open to exploring new ideas and pushing the limits of what she had seen before and what these vendors had done before. The experience certainly helped me to better convey my concepts to vendors who had not tried some of these techniques in the past and I believe that it helped them to look beyond their comfort zones to see what is possible. I love jobs where I can teach a little and learn a little, and this definitely fit that bill!

The stripes and bows on the cake mimicked Lauren's gown; the design is also a great simple choice for an in-house baker to do when a specialty baker isn't in the cards.

All photos by Gustavo Campos

Wanna learn more about the "StyleFile" and how I can work with your team of vendors anywhere in the world to bring your wedding vision to the next level? Email me at lindsay[at]lindsaylandmanevents[dot]com.